It's sort of a timing thing, but it more specifically relates to two things.

1.) when I feel the line is done, which is sort of a wishy-washy sort of reason, but is linked to my gut feeling, which is also how I write.

2.) similar phrases are sometimes linked similarly. If you notice, every time the phrase

It has always taken more

energy to create than it has

to destroy.

comes up, it is written with the exact same words, and written with the exact same line breaks. It's a structurally important phrase, and making it look the exact same way each time is a way of pointing that out.

This adds evidence to my theory that poetry is a mostly intuitive, feeling (as opposed to thinking) endeavor. The best things seem to come out when we act on what we feel is right.

I'm not a poetry man, but I've always been curious. I've written poems, but they were painstakingly crafted by hand as opposed to flowing out of me (which is also a sentiment I heard from a girl in the university who writes poetry).

In the example you gave, I wonder why you didn't break the line on the infinitive:

It has always taken more energy

to create than it has

to destroy

It seems to line up nicely, creating a refrain — a powerful tool to our pattern-seeking minds — as well as visual and semantic symmetry. "energy" is not the important part here: it's the antithesis of the creative and the destructive which you compare all the way throughout the poem. What do you think?

I mean, my only defence is that to me, the original way looks more correct to me. Also to contrast you, I think that "energy" is the most important part - It's what we're talking about, after all. It is, in some ways, the subject of the poem: energy as a metaphor for resilience.

If I was going to edit it to change the emphasis to the creation and destruction, I would write ti this way:

It has always taken

more energy to create than it has

to destroy.

which makes the amount of "energy" needed to read each line reflect the differing amounts of energy needed for creation and destruction.